


Nightsmoke

by Stripytree



Category: Half Life Trilogy - Sally Green
Genre: Asexual Character, Backstory, Black witch meetings, Epic board games, Fix-It, Gen, Happy Ending, Homelessness, It's beurocracy interspersed with soufflés and dancing really, Leaving Home, Potions, Smoking, Unrequited Love, Van doesn't die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-08-08
Packaged: 2018-06-02 21:32:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6583327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stripytree/pseuds/Stripytree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you liked Van the best, wanted to see more of Van, or wondered how she came to be the woman she was, this is for you: Van's life story, according to me.</p><p>This is my first fic, but I have a lot of headcanons about Van, and I wanted to share them with y'all :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

Victoria van Dal didn't remember her father's death, and her mother didn't talk about it. She remembered her mother's death though: the hunters, the short fight, how she killed herself rather than letting them take her. The hunters wanted vengeance; Sanne (like most powerful black witches, Van's mother only went by one name) was a black witch and therefore guilty by association. 

Sanne's gift was potions. She always wore black so the stains didn't show up. 

Her warm blonde hair had beginning to show streaks of silver, and Van had noticed that her movements weren't as easy as they were, but Sanne shrugged off Van's questions. She never made potions for herself. 

They lived in a townhouse in Rotterdam, and Sanne sent Van to the local fain primary school; she was twelve, in her last year there, and when she finished she would apprentice under her mother, probably.

Winter, an acquaintance of Van's mother, had told Van what had happened, when Van had got home from school. As Winter had described the events (as she had seen them in her Vision), Van saw it happen in her mind's eye. She walked numbly through the rooms of the house; they were all completely trashed. It almost felt as if her heart was being torn out of her chest, looking at the smashed glass of the picture frames and potion vials, the slashed soft furnishings, the splintered wooden cabinets. She wondered, in a detached way, how this building, these things, had come to mean so much to her. She didn't cry. Instead, she took her mother's book from under a floorboard in her bedroom, and put it in her schoolbag along with a change of clothes, and turned her back on the wreckage of her home. 

Winter took Van to a supplier in Austria, who would sell her to another witch as an apprentice. Before she left, Winter gave Van a small vial of Sanne's blood. After all, Van was an orphan now and would need the blood to receive her gift. Sanne had given this particular vial to Winter years ago, as an understandable precaution, given the fatality rate of black witches. 

The supplier, a small, hard-eyed woman, told Van about Linden before she visited. She was a powerful young witch making a name for herself in South Eastern Europe. Intelligent and ruthless, she had a reputation for dispatching of her enemies swiftly and cleanly, leaving no evidence of her hand. 

Nothing could have prepared Van for Linden in person, though. She could accurately be described as a force of nature. Tall and thin, she dressed simply in a crisp white shirt and black trousers. She had cropped black hair, olive skin, and fierce green eyes. With her sharp features, polite yet commanding voice, and the way she carried herself, she exuded an aura of controlled danger, and, like a natural disaster, a deadly, emotionless power. 

Van's ice-blonde hair was held back in a single braid, and she was wearing the same school polo shirt and pinafore dress that she was wearing on the day her mother died. She tried to make her pale blue eyes look powerful and dangerous, rather than embarrassingly awestruck. She wasn't sure if she was succeeding.  
'This is Victoria van Dal,' the supplier said. Van managed to nod respectfully and blushed a little as Linden scrutinised her. The supplier was explaining how intelligent and quick to learn Van was, but Linden didn't appear to be listening.  
'I'll take her,' Linden said.

Linden had a large house in rural Hungary. They had arrived there just before midnight. Van was shown to a small room on the third floor, and she put her bag on the chair before undressing and climbing into bed. It was a leather satchel containing a change of clothes and her mother's potions book along with her pencil case and a notebook: Van's only possessions. Thinking about the destruction of her home, she decided that was the way she liked it.

Van woke up at six the next morning. The change of clothes she had packed didn't seem smart enough to be worn in the presence of Linden's careful elegance, so she dressed in her school clothes again. A few minutes later, Linden came upstairs, presumably to wake Van up, and leaned against the doorframe as Van braided her hair, tapping her foot impatiently. Van tried not to fumble, and hoped that she wouldn't blush every time Linden looked at her. Van finished getting ready and followed Linden downstairs to breakfast.

As Van was too young to have a gift, she would help Linden with mundane tasks, and watch how she worked, to learn potion making (Linden's gift) as well as other things. Linden had a study that she made potions in, and Van was instructed to sit on a chair and not move, as anything could affect the potion ingredients, even breathing wrong. She gave Van a stern look even if she so much as coughed. Van understood the perfectionism; she carefully pinned her hair onto her head so it didn't accidently disturb anything.

Apart from the study, Van could look around the house as she wished. There was a mirror on the second floor landing. One morning, a week later, Van took a pair of scissors from a desk drawer and cut off her braid at the nape of her neck. The shorter hairstyle felt more comfortable; she felt more like herself. She was never feminine as a child, and her mother despaired of her refusal to wear frilly clothes and play with dolls. On her second day with Linden, Van had received some new clothes to wear. Now, she felt like the last traces of her former life were being washed away. Only now did her mother's death feel real. She cried.

When Van had been living with Linden for two weeks, she met Anna. When she came downstairs for breakfast, a tall woman with red hair sat at the table next to Linden.  
'So this is Victoria,' Anna said, and Linden affirmed that was the case. Anna laughed a deep, throaty laugh.  
'Look,' she said. 'She looks like you!' Linden smiled; she had cut Van's hair into a style similar to her own, on seeing Van's effort, perhaps irritated that it was slightly uneven.

Anna and Linden went out that evening. Linden had lined her eyes heavily with kohl, and had worn several earrings. Anna stayed for several months before she had to leave again, and during that time Linden was noticeably less impatient and demanding. Van hoped Anna would come often, but she was still intimidated by Linden, and didn't like to ask.

 

When Van was fifteen, Linden started taking her along to meetings and negotiations with other witches. One time, they travelled to London to meet Dell, to discuss the growing tensions between black and white witches in Britain. Dell was a few years younger than Linden, who was twenty-nine at this point, and she had straight brown hair, piercing blue eyes and a hooked nose. She seemed remote, and a little uncomfortable with the urban meeting place, Van thought. Dell reminded her of a bird of prey. 

Linden had some other business in London after talking with Dell, so she gave Van some time to experience the city on her own. Van had learnt English from her mother, but the language she was hearing here was just different enough to throw her. Sitting in a teashop, sipping a cup of tea very slowly, Van watched the people pass. She hadn't seen fains for three years now, except at a distance. Here, her cropped hair didn't stand out and her suit wasn't unlike the way many other people were dressed. 

A boy, a few years older than Van, sat down opposite her.  
'You're a black witch,' he said. 'I can tell.' Van was unsettled, but she tried not to show it. In answer to the question that she hadn't asked, he said, 'It's your eyes. And the way you move.' Van didn't think much of that as an explanation.  
'What do you want?' She asked him. He smiled slightly at her accent. She would lose it after a few years in England in her twenties.  
'To talk to you,' he said. 'It can be dangerous for a black witch to be out alone these days, especially a young lady.' Van didn't like his tone very much. However, although she disliked admitting to ignorance, she couldn't let this opportunity slide: Linden could be... Unapproachable.  
'Why would a black witch be in danger?'  
He seemed pleased to have been asked. 'There's always been extremists, but certain political views have been gaining a lot of momentum of late. It's politics of fear. There's a lot of rubbish going around about black witches.'  
'Like what?' Van frowned.  
'Mainly that you're unstable and dangerous. That you've got violence in your blood. It's strange really, because the only real difference between black and white witches is our gifts are different kinds of magic. There's been research done.'  
'What do you mean, different? Blacks and whites can have the same gifts.' Potions was the most common gift for both types of witch. Linden had told her that. Linden had also said that didn't mean potions couldn't be the most powerful gift of all.  
'Different in essence. We experience it differently. Black magic is stronger, but that means it also has a stronger effect on the user. Like, mentally. That's where the ideas about blacks come from, actually...'  
He reached across the table and touched Van's hand. Van wondered what he was really doing here, and asked him such.  
He lowered his voice. 'You're a stranger here; you don't know the city. And there's a hunter three tables to our right with her eye on you.'  
Van finished her tea. She stood, and he stood too. So did the hunter. Leaving the teashop, she set off back towards the hotel. The hunter followed at a distance but seemed intimidated by the boy's presence. Van wondered who he was. Linden's car was parked outside of the hotel.  
'I can make it from here,' she said to the boy. He turned to her and leaned towards her, but Van took her hand from his grip and pulled away, walking to the hotel, leaving him standing on the corner.

They left London straight after dinner. In the car, Van thought about the encounter. She hated how she had felt dependent on the stranger's protection; she decided she needed to learn to defend herself properly. She wondered if he had been about to kiss her or something on that street corner. It hadn't occurred to her at the time. He was reasonably attractive, now she thought about it, but she hadn't felt anything. Van hadn't felt anything like that towards any boy really; she hadn't had a 'crush' like the girls back at school. She wondered if she was like Linden perhaps, but then again, she didn't feel anything like that about girls either. It wasn't a topic that interested her though, and during the drive home Van mainly thought about what the stranger had said.

Van felt extremely uncomfortable with the idea that her nature would be defined by whether she was black or white. She didn't like being controlled, full stop, especially by her own body. Van remembered the first time she had difficulty staying inside at night. Linden had told her she could sleep outside if she wished, but Van asked for some nightsmoke, like Linden used. She would not be controlled by this. Her worst fear was going insane: losing control of her mind. Being at the mercy of any crazy impulses. 

They were driving slowly, but the car was a convertible (to prevent night sickness) so Van had to lean close to Linden to make her voice heard over the rush of wind in her ears.  
'Do we have violence in our blood? Do I?'  
Linden didn't ask why she wanted to know. Van liked that about her.  
'We're black witches, so we probably do. You do. Your mother killed your father, after all.' She turned to Van. 'Didn't you know?'

Van tried to reconcile the memory she had of her mother with the idea of a murderer. She wondered why she did it. Why she made sure Van grew up without a father. She wondered if she did it just because she was a black witch and used that as an excuse to let her emotions get the better of her.

Van hated being called Victoria. It was a frilly, girly name, and Van had never understood girls. Linden never really called Van anything, which Van liked. Van Dal means from the valley, and Van and her mother's home in Rotterdam was not in a valley (and valleys were quite hard to come by in that area of Europe), so Van assumed her mother's family was not originally Dutch. She didn't want her mother's surname anyway. It was a reminder of her history, her legacy, and Van wanted to make her own way in life. 

Later, Van would find it ironic that her last name was almost Vandal, yet she left almost no trace of herself in the properties she stayed in.

Van remembered meeting Isch, a couple of months ago. Even at twelve, the girl's shrewd, hard eyes contrasted with her soft and extravagant exterior. Linden had needed information from the supplier (the same one who had sold Van to Linden) and Van had been told to wait outside. Isch was the supplier's apprentice. Van had asked her about her name. She had said it was short for Österreichisch (Austrian in German), but the beauty of it was it could be short for almost any nationality. Van loved how Isch's name didn't define her, even though it came from a word that did. A few months after her sixteenth birthday, Van decided to drop the rest of her name. Van meant from, it could be part of anyone's name, but on its own it didn't mean anything at all.

Linden gave Van three gifts: Linden's own silver lighter, a necklace that had belonged to Van's grandmother (Van had no idea how or why Linden had that), and a fountain pen. Normally, the three gifts are all heirlooms, but Linden knew how Van felt about her family. After five years of living together, Linden knew Van well; she knew Van wanted to wrote her own story. Linden gave her the vial of blood that Winter had given to Van and Van had given to Linden, and Van drank it.

Linden and Van were both pleased and unsurprised when they very quickly discovered that Van's gift was potions. Van remembered how her mother had always worn black, so as not to show up the potion stains. And the bloodstains, Van thought. Linden favoured black too, but that was only because black suited her best (Van had asked). 

Later, when Van had a source of income, she would buy her suits in the palest colours. She didn't need to worry about stains, after all. She never spilt a drop.


	2. Two

On the first day of the rest of her life, Van was sitting cross-legged on her bed at Linden's house, reading her mother's potions book. Eighteen years old and no longer an apprentice, Van had packed her things and was ready to move out, but was stalling. Since receiving her gift the September before last, Van had read and re-read her mother's book, but hadn't actually attempted any potions from it. A witch's gift is personal, and Sanne's potions didn't make the same sort of sense that Linden's did. Van had left her mother behind a long time ago, but it was still a blow to be reminded that she had closer kinship with Linden than her own mother, even if that was only to be expected.

Van didn't even know what she was going too do with the rest of her life. The book was her only real link to life outside of Linden's world; she could hardly remember Rotterdam despite living there twice as long as she had lived in Hungary. The book was still a bit of a mystery, with all its cryptic notes and references. Sighing, she put it back in her bag and stood up, stretching. It was Spring now and Van could feel the restlessness into the air. It was time for her to make her own way.

Five hours later, Van was sitting stiffly on a narrow, hard train seat, satchel in her lap, en route to Austria, studiously ignoring the noises, coughs and talking from the other passengers. She made a mental note to never travel this way ever again if she could help it; she was getting a headache.

Van arrived in Innsbruck and made her way to the supplier's house. The reason for Van's visit to the supplier was simply to put her in touch with other witches. After all, she had to get a job and she was only qualified in potion making. The supplier, whose name, Van finally learnt, was Strom, brought out a map and told Van where all the witches were, while also explaining some politics and mentioning the Black Witch Meetings (held every four years, the next in two years' time, in various locations). Isch was also there, and Van had greeted her warmly. Van left with the contact details of several witches, and a promise from Strom to send business her way when she was settled.

 

Linden had given Van what seemed initially like a lot of money, but now, sitting in a small hotel room in Hamburg, Van realised that it wouldn't pay for more than two weeks' stay. She had decided to travel around Europe but was now wondering how well that would work. She wondered where she was supposed to live when the money ran out, and then realised that it was her problem now, and Linden wasn't going to sort it for her. She would find a way.

Later that evening, Van was leaning against a bar, sipping schnapps (she had tried beer and didn't like it). The Beatles were playing on the record player. The air was smoky and unpleasant, and the people were talking loudly; Van was once again reminded that foreign languages sound completely different in real life to how they do when you are learning them. She spoke casually to the other patrons but didn't get involved: she had come here to watch people. She tapped her foot to _Back in the USSR_ and watched.

She came back each night, and watched and learnt. She dressed in a causal masculine shirt and trousers, leaving her ash grey suit in the hotel room. When someone sidled up to her as she left the bar one evening and offered her a strange smelling herb that some of the people smoked, she accepted. 

As she left the bar in the early hours, a week later, a man ran up behind her. From the sound of his footsteps and the laughter of the men standing outside the bar, he was more than a little inebriated. He grabbed her. For a few seconds, she seized up in panic. Then remembering that she did actually know how to defend herself, Van turned, pinched the undersides of his upper arms and twisted hard, before shoving him and running. When she got back to the hotel, she discovered her wallet was gone.

The next evening, she packed her suit, book and potions things into her bag (it was a squash to get it all to fit), put her coat on, and checked out of the hotel. With her silver lighter and papers in her pocket, she was carrying all of her possessions. Then, she walked a little way before finding a fire escape she had seen while walking around the city, and curled up beneath it. She would've had to leave the hotel in a couple of days anyway. 

Van found out that it was an advantage to look masculine when living on the streets. She pulled her coat hood over her face when it was dark.

She hadn't realised that she had lived a sheltered life, but now Van found out just how much of a bubble she had been living in. But she didn't let her shock or pity show on her face; she was just the same as they were. She stayed for a few weeks before coming up with a solution.

 

Van washed in a restaurant bathroom before hitchhiking out of Hamburg. She then walked through the countryside, looking for an unoccupied property. She found what she was looking for. She picked the lock (she learnt the skill a week ago) and made her way to the kitchen. Finding a cookery book, she attempted to follow the instructions to make potato dumplings in soup using the ingredients available. 

It wasn't very good. Perhaps surprisingly given her gift, Van struggled a bit with cooking. However, it was the best meal Van had eaten in weeks, so she wasn't complaining.

On locating a study, Van sat back and relaxed a little with a glass of wine from an opened bottle. She had (temporarily at least) solved the problem of accommodation, although technically she was still homeless. Now though, she could make use of the contacts the supplier had given her. Finding some letter writing materials in the desk draw (Van now had significantly less compunctious about stealing), she set about writing some letters.

 

Her reputation grew over the following five years. She kept moving between properties throughout the continent, preferring to stay in holiday homes which were abandoned for all but a few weeks of the year, and finally learnt to drive in stolen cars. The lack of permanency didn't bother her; Van had long believed that getting attached to places and objects was a mistake. 

She developed potions to mimic the effects of the stuff she had smoked back in Hamburg, potions to unlock doors (lock picking was inelegant, Van decided, when you could do it in an instant by breathing smoke into the keyhole), and a potion remove the feeling of intoxication instantly. She also learnt to shop for food, but only got marginally better at cooking. 

Sometimes, her clients wanted potions that could kill without leaving a trace. 

Potion making is an art. Although many potions are made from recipes that list ingredients, you rely on instinct to know when to add them, how to prepare them, how long to leave them there. It isn't really like a compulsion, it's more like accessing knowledge that everyone has. That said, it doesn't always work, but the more you learn about ingredients and potions and possible effects, the more accurate and clear your instincts become. The gift feels like knowledge. Van had always had a hunger for knowledge. The gift of potions is an intimate knowledge of the way the natural world works and how to manipulate it. It sounds like a science, but when you are using it, it feels like an art. The most beautiful art. 

She still looked through her mother's book frequently; there was one particular note that intrigued her: _Marsh curse, careful with thoughts._ Thought was an important element of potion making (one had to be in the right frame of mind, not allow errant thoughts, and focus on the desired effects), but Van didn't really understand it: thoughts aren't corporeal; they aren't an ingredient. What was Marsh curse? Was Marsh a person?

However, the most pressing matter on her hands was the Black Witch Meeting, in Manchester in October, a month after Van's twenty-fourth birthday. She hadn't gone to the previous meeting, in Paris, as she didn't have much of a reputation, and it sounded boring. Now though, she really had no excuse.

 

She travelled by train to Manchester, wearing a pale blue suit and holding the possessions that didn't fit into her old satchel in a larger handbag. She decided that train travel had definitely improved since she last tried it.

The meeting was held in a large room at the university. There were a lot of announcements and information that meant nothing to Van, but she listened attentively anyway, knowing how useful information was. She learnt that Axel Edge (a feared and powerful witch, from a long line of feared and powerful witches) and Saba (an equally powerful though less famous witch) had had a son called Marcus six years ago. 

She also learnt that the tensions between black and white witches (which Linden had been discussing almost a decade ago with Dell) had escalated, but a group calling itself _The Society_ (evidently there had been disagreements about the name, so they didn't bother with an interesting one) had grown in membership. The members mainly operated from London, protecting both black and white witches from attacks. They were considered to be a secret society, despite not actually being a secret, even from the council and hunters. Van thought about when she was last in London, when that strange young man had protected her, and felt satisfied that that mystery was solved.

Van had been delighted to see Winter again, and they caught up after the meeting. It had been twelve years, and Winter's hair was going grey, but that complemented her imposing stature and dark eyes, which lit up when she recognised Van.  
'Look at you!' Winter had exclaimed. 'I hardly recognise you, all grown up!'  
Isch had taken over from Strom as supplier, so already knew Winter, and the three of them went out for dinner that evening. Winter had a job teaching at a fain primary school, and had a lot of stories to tell about it. Van asked if either of them had heard of a witch called Marsh (after all, Isch was a supplier and suppliers know everyone). She wasn't disappointed: Marsh was an influential British witch in the 1930s, who died when a potion she had intended to kill someone in revenge backfired on her before causing a massive explosion at her house in Northamptonshire. 

Winter went back to Lelystad, and Van had intended to go back to France, but she was tired after the meeting and didn't feel like travelling, and Isch had a hotel suite, so Van stayed with Isch. 

'Mind if I smoke?' Isch didn't mind. Van was currently smoking mint leaves, treated with a potion she had created a few years ago, as well as a potion that mimicked the effects of nightsmoke. Isch put _Ziggy Stardust_ on the record player, and Van gave her _The White Album_ to put on after that, and they shared Van's cigarettes. They sat on the bed and talked into the early hours. Van enjoyed Isch's conversation: she was funny, knowledgable, and fiercely intelligent. Isch laughed when Van informed her that she had no relationship, never had, and had not in fact even had her first kiss, then leaned over and clumsily kissed her. It was possible that the smoke had gone to both of their heads. They didn't mention it the next day. (Van wasn't attracted to Isch, and Isch never indicated that she was attracted to Van.) They parted the next day with promises to keep in touch more and in any case they would see each other at the next Meeting, which would be in Wales.

 

Van stayed in England. She visited Marsh's house, which had been restored after the explosion and had a fain couple living it. They were interested to hear about their house's history, but neither they nor the house couldn't give Van any information. Van then set to scouring antiques shops and libraries in the midlands for anything that might help. (That was actually an excuse. She just wanted to look at antiques shops.) She found a very nice carpet bag which was large enough to hold almost all of her possessions, but nothing Marsh-related except for a small piece in a newspaper in the library archive about the explosion. Marsh had been unnamed in it, but her death was reported and it said her possessions were to be auctioned off to pay for repairs. 

Eventually, Van found record of the auction in a diary, and decided that what she wanted was a book, which had been sold to a private collector, and was the only interesting item mentioned. Thankfully, the collector was named, and Van, upon looking him up, discovered that he was still alive. 

His lack of reluctance to give Van the book may or may not have had something to do with the smoke she had blown in his face. 

Marsh's book was in the form of a diary crossed with a potions book. As spring flowers woke up and decorated the grounds of the house Van was staying in, Van holed herself up in the study with the book. Marsh had become more and more fascinated by potions that affected the mind, and Van absorbed her enthusiasm, taking in everything the book could tell her. Feeding her hunger for knowledge and understanding, Van was as content as she ever was. 

Certain potion ingredients can absorb thoughts and memories the way they absorb sunlight, in the right conditions. It is almost the reverse of the way most ingredients act, the way they can influence bodies and minds, except these do both: taking in thoughts and giving them out. You have to think about the effects you want when you're making a potion, Van had realised; this must be because the ingredients absorb the thoughts and use them to direct the magic.

Herbs work on fains' minds too, on a physical level, but for witches, herbs can influence magic as well; that's why only a witch can make a potion even if a fain has perfect and precise instructions. Marsh mentioned ginseng and ginkgo as being powerful in her potions. To make potions, your magic has to be the right kind to enter and shape a potion through the ingredients; that's what the gift of potions means. The differences in your magic reflect the differences in your mind; that's why different potion makers have stronger affinities with different ingredients.

Potions get their power from the magic of whoever makes them; it would make sense for them to be able to absorb thoughts too. This opens up all kinds of possibilities for making potions, Van thought. She had long experimented with the psychoactive effects of potions. She wondered if it would be possible to make a potion to take someone's memory or knowledge, but also store it so someone else could gain it. Or a potion to give someone else a memory, but without you losing it yourself. Or to create a new memory for someone...

Marsh had had a very strong gift. Her potions became whatever she wanted them to be. That's why her last potion blew up and killed her: she wanted revenge, but she was also severely depressed. And depression doesn't let you choose the thoughts in your head.

 

The next meeting was in Aberystwyth. Van was twenty-eight. Van, Isch and Winter rented a holiday cottage and stayed in the area for a few weeks, walking and relaxing (they all climbed Cadair Idris, wandered around the town, and spent time at Ynyslas beach). Isch had brought her record player, and she and Van danced around the cottage to Donna Summer and The Bee Gees, as Isch was now very into disco music.

Van had developed potions to enhance her cigarettes further, drawing on notes from Marsh's book and others, to reduce the physical effects of ageing. She remembered how her mother had never used potions on herself and had let herself grow old and frail. Van didn't want that for herself; she didn't want to be vulnerable. She wanted to be in control.

 

Winter didn't come to the meeting after that, in Switzerland. Another black witch, the mother of a child that Winter was teaching, killed her (Winter had tried to get the child taken away from his mother). At the meeting, the witch, Daniela, had told everyone what she did. Then she had come over to Van and Isch, and apologised for their loss. Isch shook with anger at Daniela's gloating tone, and the thinly veiled threats she had made; Isch didn't like it when people didn't respect her. Van's face showed no emotion, even when, a week later, news got out that Daniela was dead. The cause of death wasn't reported, but Van knew that she died after swallowing her own tongue. 

Van destroyed her notes about that potion. She didn't want anyone getting any ideas. 

 

The next meeting was in Sweden, and Van and Isch danced around their hotel room, smoked too much, and sang along to disco classics, pretending almost desperately that this might not be the last time. 

The one after that was in New York. Van boarded an aeroplane for the first time, alone with just her carpet bag, and felt excitement flutter in her chest. America felt like new beginnings and Van couldn't wait.


	3. Three

Nesbitt mainly remembered the fairy tales. His mother, his black witch mother, sat next to him on the roof of their little Australian bungalow, where they both slept (even though Nesbitt didn't really need to) and told him about magic that wasn't real, but sounded so much more exciting than the magic that was.

Annie Nesbitt's gift was understanding animals, but the animals didn't say much. They were still scared of her; she was still human. Annie still preferred them to humans. 

Nesbitt was christened John but had always gone by Nesbitt to be distinguished from his father, even though he had never met him.

They lived quietly, just the two of them. Annie didn't eat meat (her gift made it impossible) but wanted the best for her son: he was a growing boy; he needed protein! Nesbitt killed the animals himself. Annie felt guilty, but she told herself it was better than buying from the shops, where there were people and cruelty and ignorance, and the animals were born to die.

There weren't witches in Annie's fairy tales, but if there were they wouldn't be black and white. They would be good and evil, and the evil ones would be the ones who didn't try to be better.

Nesbitt's gift was seeing in the dark. It was a useful gift, especially in the dark nights in the bush. He could walk silently and the animals didn't even notice his smell.

He didn't go to school, but he went to town because his mother couldn't. There were people who saw a small boy who looked like a stranger. Nesbitt saw what they could do, but he didn't kill them because even when they were worse than animals, they had the potential to be better, and so did he. That was what his mother taught him, but later on he would teach himself better.

Nesbitt was always on the outside: Annie sat alone (listening to the flies), and the people in town intimidated in groups, where they didn't each have to be the best at everything because they were all parts of a whole. 

When he was 18, Nesbitt went to New York. He hitchhiked hundreds of miles to an airport, and caught a plane to America. He never heard from his mother because she didn't have a telephone and never went into town to post a letter, but still, every year, he sent her a birthday card.

 

Van stood outside a high end restaurant in New York. There wasn't quiet anywhere around here, no more than there were stars above her, but it was peaceful here outside, in a strange way, where there wasn't chatter swirling around her head. Feed someone good food and you get them on your side, that was the idea of tonight. 

When Nesbitt saw her, he knew he wouldn't forget her. She was androgynous and beautiful and captivating. Her skin was pale and perfect, her hair was cropped short and almost white, and her eyes were faraway and icy blue. She wore a powder blue suit and leaned elegantly against a wall smoking a cigarette. (Nesbitt didn't know it was possible to look that elegant leaning against a grubby brick wall.) She looked otherworldly. The smoke was blue. 

Nesbitt was a chef at the restaurant. He pulled a cigarette out of a pack in his pocket and lit it with a plastic lighter. He was short and sturdy, with uneven stubble, short dark hair and skin that showed years of sunburn. 

They smoked in silence for a few minutes.

Van had arrived at her hotel with a carpet bag of potions things and some old books, and she was reminded how ephemeral it all was: everything she owned in a hotel room or her pockets. She had put down no roots and that was what she had wanted but it was all so temporary. She wondered if she would still be drifting through life, smoking homemade cigarettes and staying in other people's houses, in twenty years' time.

It seemed okay, normal even, when she was in her twenties, and then her thirties, but it was starting to feel like borrowed time.

Van wondered if her life lacked direction: she considered her goal in life to be to learn as much as possible, which was not really a goal as there was no end point. She wondered if she had become controlled by her need to be free from control. That would be ironic.

 

'What're you smoking?' Nesbitt asked, because he couldn't think of anything that made blue smoke.

'I haven't given it a name,' Van replied. Her accent was English with a faint Germanic trace.  
She finished the cigarette and put it in the metal bin on the opposite wall. She moved like a black witch; Nesbitt'd had a year in New York to learn such things. He wanted to ask her who she was, and whether he could be a black witch too. He had wondered if that was where he would belong.

'Your Gift?' He asked, to show he knew that she was a witch. It's only rude for white witches to ask about their gifts.

Van nodded, interest piqued. 'Potions.' Nesbitt wondered how old she was; she looked barely twenty-five but her voice was a little too gravelly and Nesbitt thought that she didn't look innocent, even though he had always thought that the idea that you could read someone's character and life history by gazing into their eyes was rubbish.

'I'm Nesbitt, by the way.'

'Have you lived here long, Nesbitt?'

'Moved here last September. Grew up in Australia.'

'How did you come to be working here?' It was unusual for a witch to be employed among fains.

'I always cooked, at home. Thought I'd play to my strengths.' He shrugged. 'Not a great job, but it's all I'm qualified for.' Nesbitt didn't enjoy working in a kitchen where he was told what to cook and how to cook it. 

'I've never been good at cooking. Perhaps I could offer you a job?' Nesbitt acted like a fain and Van doubted he had apprenticed, but he looked capable and agreeable. Her life lacked direction; maybe this path was a good idea. She could admit to herself that sometimes she was lonely. 'You would have access to the best facilities and there would be a variety of other things you would be expected to do. My name is Van, by the way,' she added, as an afterthought. 

Nesbitt had nothing tying him to this place, only an unsatisfying job and a tiny flat. 'Sure thing,' he grinned, stubbing out his cigarette. After all, it wasn't every day you got interesting job offers from mysterious and beautiful women. 

He hadn't been warned about prejudice against half bloods, but he noticed the general feeling, when he observed the groups of witches that had seemed to descend on New York in the past week. Van seemed different, but- 'I'm half blood, though.'

Van smiled slightly. She had met all sorts of people in her life and she knew they were all the same where it mattered. 'That won't be a problem. I'll be leaving after the black witch meeting tomorrow night.' That explained all the witches, then. Shall I meet you here tomorrow morning, at ten?' 

Nesbitt agreed, and they shook hands, before going back inside. Nesbitt knew he wanted to belong somewhere, to have a home. He wondered if it would be long before he heard home and thought of Van. Nesbitt had come here to seek his fortune, so to speak. He wondered if he had found it.

 

They met again the next morning (Nesbitt's shift hadn't started yet) and Van explained the particulars of her job idea. Then Van, seeing Nesbitt on the edge of being a black witch and wanting to be more, invited him to the meeting. They met up (same place), and Van had warned him not to come defenseless, even though they both already knew that defenseless wasn't something Nesbitt would ever be.

 

This was the first meeting held outside of Europe, because it was getting too dangerous there for black witches. 

There were introductions. There was a young man, Nesbitt's age, who everyone knew before he said anything was Marcus, son of Axel Edge and Saba. He had very dark eyes and he was wearing a dark suit. He looked uncomfortable, but he was also frightening. Madness and ruthlessness are common in black witches, and psychopathy ran in the Edge family.

He had heard of Van (she had inherited from Linden the title of best potion maker and the reputation of not letting anyone stand in her way. Linden stopped coming to meetings before Van started.) He wanted potions and she left them for him in the place he had suggested, a week later.

Van was prompted to introduce Nesbitt, and a tall woman with long hair (Pilot) spat in his face. Van breathed smoke in her face and mixed it with bad intentions, (the smoking ban wasn't for years yet, and the witches never enforced it in meetings) and Pilot left, with rot inside her that would take months to heal. 'We're all the same where it matters,' Van told her icily.

 

Van and Nesbitt left New York two weeks after the meeting. They sat next to each other in silence, and smoked. Van would've let Nesbitt try her cigarettes if he asked, but she didn't know how they would affect him. She warned him of the dangers because it is polite to do so for a colleague (not a test subject, an equal), but she still hoped he would let her see what would happen.

'Funny how you're called black witches, y'know?' Nesbitt said, lazily blowing smoke. Van turned to him and raised an eyebrow. He would've blushed slightly, if he was the kind of person who blushed. He continued, 'To lots of fains, black witch means evil and white witch means good, but we're all as bad as each other, really. And you don't dress in black, and you look really white, physically, I mean, and some of them say black witches should be ugly but you're beautiful-'

Van smiled. 'Gosh, thank you. I know what you mean though. We shouldn't use black and white to describe ourselves, like we're opposites, when we are hardly different at all. We should be, say, blue and purple.'

'Which would be which?'

'Black witches can be blue. I prefer blue. And fains can be green. That makes you turquoise.'

'And half whites would be greeny purple. Is that even a colour?'

'Sounds a bit like octarine.' 

'The colour of magic. Huh.' Nesbitt's mother told stories about magic that wasn't real but had always seemed so much more exciting than the magic that was, but Van's world of deadly potions and chasing knowledge sounded exciting and brilliant and beautiful and almost like it wasn't real. It was a world he could easily fall in love with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The views on meat eating expressed here are flawed. To make up for it, here's a video on veganism and animal cruelty : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5hGQDLprA8


	4. Four

Later, when Nesbitt looked back on his twenties, he was shocked at how fast the time had gone. It was ten years of almost constant travel, all around the world, moving from house to house with Van. He picked up new recipes and developed his cooking until it was probably, in his own humble opinion, better than world class. It was like an art; the closest he could get to potion making.

Nesbitt grew, from a boy from Australia who new nothing of the world but was fairly good at cooking, to someone who Van valued and thought was worth her time. She had trained him, taught him everything he could learn from her, taught him almost everything she knew.

He learnt other things. He learnt what food she liked (nothing too sweet; it gave her toothache) and built on it; he made her favourite soufflé at least twice a week. He learnt how to look after someone.

Relationships never really crossed his mind, because he was with Van all the time, always working. And that was enough. She treated him like a servant, but also like a friend, as she didn't look down on him. She respected his skill and asked for his advice. It was almost enough.

 

His thirties were passing in a similar way. When Van found out something new, she would become obsessed with it; she needed to know everything. She needed to be working on something; she needed to have a project. There were potions to mimic and change the mind, nature, and the body. Anything that involved a chemical or physical substance could be done with a potion. Potions wasn't something she did, it was something she had to understand. There was the time she had experimented with hormones, plant and animal. There was that time that she had tried to change the laws of physics. Nothing was out of her reach.

There was one time when Van and Nesbitt were visiting Dell in the Scottish highlands. Isch also came (Van was delighted to see her again; both had stopped going to meetings some years ago), along with another witch named Avocet. While the trip was ostensibly for research and comparing notes, a kind of mini meeting for a few allied black witches who weren't into politics, a lot of time was spent on epic games of Risk.

Van was a natural; her luck was good and her strategies were better. She would wait until just the right moment to manipulate everyone into doing exactly what she wanted without them even noticing that she was pulling the strings. Nesbitt, after Avocet lost about a dozen armies in a lengthy battle of attrition with Isch and then Van swept in behind him, mimed a puppet jerking on a string, to general amusement. Nesbitt's weakness was his unwillingness to take on Van, even though he had no qualms about anyone else losing horrifically. Isch was completely ruthless though, and would break an alliance at the drop of a hat. Dell, who was getting on in years a bit, would fool people into taking pity on her, then turn around and thrash them. Avocet got the twenty-four territories card in the first game (which they thought was by far the hardest) and was eliminated about halfway through. Needless to say, the games were more exciting than a board game had any right to be, and went on for hours.

Even Marcus dropped by for a day, although nobody mentioned that they were playing risk as he wouldn't stand a chance against Van, and nobody wanted to find out how badly he would react to losing. Instead, Nesbitt cooked them all a massive soufflé and they sat around discussing species of bird in the area. Dell was an authority, as she lived there and had the gift of flight so could get to the best positions, and Marcus was very interested. Van was quietly wondering if a potion could replicate either of their gifts. Probably.

 

Nesbitt was thirty-eight when Van discovered amulets, and Nesbitt would pinpoint that year as the year that things started to go wrong. It didn't seem like this obsession was any different, but it was this one that catapulted them into a fateful spiral of things smaller than the laws of nature but far bigger than the little world that they lived in. It seemed strange how all the right choices, carefully calculated, didn't lead to the right conclusion.

Van first encountered amulets in a note in a potions book. The writer was detailing the possible reasons why a particular potion may not work. The second time she saw amulets mentioned was only three days later, when another book recommended the use of one for protection while making certain potions. She was intrigued, of course, so Van dedicated the next few months to finding out everything it was possible to know about amulets.

Some were like she expected; mystical looking pebbles and gems, sometimes carved with symbols and often strung on necklaces. Others were pieces of bone and animal skin (rabbit feet were prevalent), coins, statuettes, or bits of fabric or plant. It didn't matter what the amulet was, it was the magic put into them that mattered. Amulet creation was a rare gift that only a few witches had ever been recorded as having, so the majority of amulets worked on coincidence and the placebo effect, but some had the power to protect someone. These worked best when there was as little background energy as possible, so they weren't stones or gems, as these are easily charged with magical energy. They were pieces of paper, inscribed with clarifying and amplifying runes. And the most famous and powerful of these was the Vardian Amulet.

Naturally, it had been lost for years. Naturally, Van wanted to find it. And Nesbitt knew better than to underestimate Van's skill in finding random lost objects.

 

It wasn't the research that Nesbitt remembered, when he looked back at those couple of years, even though Van talked about it to him a lot more than he really needed to know. It was Van herself.

He made tea for Van on the long nights she spent poring over arcane texts, he drove Van down tiny roads in dozens of different countries while she sat in the backseat making notes from her latest book, and accompanied Van when she met with all of her contacts, broke into people's houses, and persuaded people to tell her everything they knew, acting as something like a bodyguard.

He remembered her intensity when she found out something new, and her beautiful eyes, and the way she sometimes listened intently to him and other times hardly listened at all.

Nesbitt remembered the adrenaline, when they ran for their lives from a cave that was more inhabited than they expected, and collapsed on the sofa with a large glass of red wine each when they got home safe. And when Nesbitt leaned over and kissed Van, when they were tired and high from the victory of getting out safely, she let him for just a few seconds before turning her head away.

 

They tracked the Vardian amulet down to Gabriel Boutin, and to Geneva. And then Nathan Byrn entered their lives, like a lovable, sweary, little hurricane.

 

Van joined the alliance, so Nesbitt did too. Van always used to play music as she worked, and she would never notice when the record finished playing and there was just white noise. Van never played music any more.

The war was getting closer, and they started camping in the woods instead of living in houses. Nesbitt noticed with admiration that Van seemed just as comfortable roughing it like this as she did everywhere else. Even as everything seemed to fall to pieces, nothing seemed to phase her.

 

He remembered when he gave up. Nesbitt remembered realising that he didn't have to be here, he didn't have to live this, he didn't have to die for anyone else. 

He woke up sweating from a horrific nightmare. He had dreamt that Van died, from stepping on a landmine. It was wrong and painful and didn't make sense and there was no dignity and he wasn't even there. He dreamt the grief, too, that her brilliant mind was gone, and her magic and power and knowledge, all the things she never got to say and the plans she never finished, all the things he never told her but she probably knew anyway, and how she was always three steps ahead of everyone and how beautiful she looked when she smiled. 

It made him wonder, for the first time since he had met Van, if he had made the right decision.

He woke up, he found Van, and they left the alliance that day.

 

First, they went to stay with Dell in Scotland, where they would be out of the way of everything. Dell asked him, once, if he thought he was going to leave, and find the right woman and have kids. Nesbitt said that the only woman he needed was Van.

Maybe someday he will go back to Australia. He knew how to take care of people, he could raise children. Maybe Van will finally take on an aprentice and they could be almost a surrogate child to him. Maybe they will get a dog or cat. Maybe they will grow old together and buy their own house sonewhere nice, and Nesbitt will keep cooking and Van will keep learning but won't mind any more if she has too many attatchments and will embrace a different kind of freedom.

Maybe they will both lead long, happy lives.


End file.
